THE PLOT:

Austin Cooper is a 20-year old Texas A&M student who is sent abroad during the summer to teach “street kids” in the small Ugandan village of Kapchorwa. After a week away, Austin and his companion return to the village to make a horrifying discovery. The streets are empty and so is their sponsor’s home. The hospital is full of patients who appear to have been afflicted with the Ebola virus.
When Austin’s companion begins to exhibit those same symptoms, Austin reaches out to the man’s brother. Little does he know that the brother has bad intentions in his heart. These intentions become clear as he and some of his associates arrive in the village to assess the situation.
When evidence is uncovered that this might be an airborne strain of the virus, a plan is hatched to purposely infect Jihadists before sending them back to their countries of origin in the western world to spread the disease.
However, the terrorist plot may not be as well hidden as they had hoped. When the NSA tracks the movements of suspected Jihadists, they uncover evidence that leads them straight to Kapchorwa. For one of those NSA agents, Olivia Cooper, the matter then becomes very personal.
Meanwhile, in Denver, Olivia and Austin’s father begins to fall victim to Ebola paranoia. He starts to take on aspects of the “Prepper” lifestyle even as he worries about his son’s well-being overseas.
One of my favorite sections of the book in retrospect is a conversation between Olivia Cooper and a doctor who had delivered a lecture in the NSA building. The book points out a few times that while Ebola can be a nasty disease, there are many other diseases that kill hundreds of thousands more each year that don’t get nearly the media coverage. The conversation within the book manages to remind us of this fact while remaining light and humorous throughout.
When it comes to weaknesses, the book doesn’t have many. There is a particular moment in the book that I feel was intended to be a big surprise to the audience. There are two characters that share a connection. However, I saw this reveal coming pretty early in the story, so I wasn’t even remotely shocked when it played out that way.
There are a few other aspects of the story that I take issue with, including some character motivations that remain unclear and a plot thread that was gaining early momentum but then was all but forgotten as the book reached the climax. However, I am willing to see how they play out since this is the first book in a trilogy and you can’t give everything away in the first installment.
As pointed out in the book’s preface, it does end on a cliffhanger. This was the best possible place to end the first book to get the reader interested in finding out what happens next in the story. I couldn’t wait to transition into the second book after I finished the first.

THE AUTHOR:

For Bobby Adair, the story of ‘Ebola K’ is quite personal. You can read his account of how this book came to be published by clicking here.
Adair has created a few characters that are likable and compelling. A few other characters seem to be very stereotypical. That may seem like a criticism, but in this instance the stereotypes are a reflection of what happens in real life.
Adair is uncompromising in his depiction of the effects of Ebola and the brutality of terror. This makes for a more realistic book, even if it also a book that you wouldn’t necessarily desire to read while consuming your lunch.

THE NARRATION:

I very much enjoyed Adam Verner’s narration. He got a lot out of his vocal performance, conveying emotion and suffering as well as using a collection of different accents and voice inflections. Verner’s performance alone is enough to make this a hidden gem.

THE PRODUCTION:

The audio track sounds great. The dialog comes through crisp and clean with no noticeable glitches to be found. There are chapter stops in all the right places. The track is free of any music or sound effects.

CONCLUSION:

It took a little while for me to get sucked in to the story, but after I was it was hard to put it down.
I wouldn’t call ‘Ebola K’ perfect by any stretch but I liked it well enough to want to revisit this world again in the future.
After reading ‘Ebola K’, I certainly understood Audible’s decision to include it in the “hidden gem sale”.